Tomorrow Will be Different

There are a few days out of every year where it is possible for me to step out of my own head and see myself in another context, one that isn’t smudged with the wet paint of an afternoon hangover, or the negative thoughts about the size of my thighs or the wrinkles in my face. These days of clarity, brought on by impending changes and often simple differences in temperature, can be most exciting. So very rarely in my adult life do I feel the inspiration that used to come to me so easily, rushes of joy and sadness have been replaced with the numbness that cushion the blow of the fading dreams the person I once was clung so tightly to.

Today is a different day because tomorrow will be different too. Tomorrow I will take the Narita Express and board a plane to Seoul, the city I grew to love just one year ago. Tomorrow I will have another chance to turn it all around, because despite my urge to habituate, I will have to change. No usual bars or usual people, no Indian food at six in the morning in Sasazuka, no bike ride down Inokashira dori, no futon surrounded by PET bottles. I wish that every day was the day before I was leaving, and every tomorrow was the day I left. Fresh perspective is so hard to fight for in a world of monotony.

I have to wake up in three hours to pack, I can’t pack now because my roommate, and friend, Alex is asleep. Our ceiling light has three settings, painfully florescent, unhelpfully dim, and off. We share a bedroom for 600$, that’s 300 big ones each. There’s one big window and one closet and a large desk centered in the middle of the ends of our two futons, giving us as much privacy as is possible when living eight feet from someone else. Outside the window is a tree overlooking a small park. When I wake up I fold my futon up and pull a chair by the desk to stare out the window drinking canned coffee I had bought the night before at the convenience store. I look to see who is in the park. Is it the old man sweeping up fallen leaves, a construction worker smoking on his lunch break, or two teens embraced in the most innocent and passionate hug that the world has ever seen? Every person gives me the pleasure of a voyeur. When the five o’clock city alarm goes off I watch the street behind the park and see the people on their journeys home. The beckoning of the morning crow is drowned out by the evening roar of the cicada, singing in unison after thirteen years of living in a tree, crawling out for a short summer with the soul purpose of annoying the fuck out of me.

When I return to Tokyo in two or three weeks, I will be different and so will Tokyo. I like to think that, I like to pretend to be a new person, someone admirable or insightful or full of life. I can have these last few hours of inspiration before the time comes to leave, if I’m lucky I will wake up as someone else and someone else I will stay.